Exodus
by Zayz
Summary: Fitz/Olivia. Though walking away like this is the hardest thing she's ever done, Olivia needs to save herself. Alternate ending to S3 finale. For Cierra, because canon Olake is unacceptable.


A/N: So…that finale.

Yeah.

Cierra over on Tumblr (lazyexceptwhencooking) requested a fix-it fic from me – and though it maybe isn't quite what she expected, I hope she nonetheless finds my version more fulfilling than canon. I kept the framework for the episode and the season the same (though, if it were up to me, S3 would have been done very differently) and basically just changed the ending.

I ship Olitz, but not the Olitz I've seen in S3. That's hardly even recognizable as Olitz. But it's the Olitz I have, so I'm doing what I can with them. My priority, though, lies with Liv, which is why this goes the way it does.

I do hope you like it.

* * *

**Exodus  
By: Zayz**

* * *

He asks to come with her. He asks her to save him – bring him back to the light. He asks, his eyes wide and desperate, the flecks of gold in his hazel irises catching the light just so and making her heart ache – and for a moment, she is very nearly tempted.

She wants to save him. She wants to save everybody. She knows – and he has certainly reminded her, on occasion – that she is part of the reason that he's in this deeply unenviable position.

And, if she's totally honest with herself, the idea of company sounds almost too good to pass up. She's so tired of standing alone, of doing everything alone out of necessity. Having someone soft and warm to hold her hand, to occupy the other side of the bed, cannot be the worst thing in the world.

So a weary Olivia Pope, shoulders curled inward and lower lip quivering slightly, looks Jake Ballard in the eye, and nearly says yes.

But then, she sighs, deflates, and murmurs, "No. I can't."

* * *

The crux of the matter is this: going away is not about Jake. It's not about Fitz. It's not about her father or Fitz's dead son or her associates or her business. It's about herself. It's about Olivia.

Something, somewhere, needs to give, and be just about Olivia.

She is exhausted down to her bones from the past year. The past five years, really. She has given all that she can give – everyone around her has taken pieces of her, bit by bit, as though she's a community pie that can be divided like war spoils – and she no longer knows what's left to give.

She cannot save Jake. She cannot save anyone. She is still struggling, tooth and nail, for a way to save herself.

She is the problem. She will fix it. But for that, she needs peace, not companionship – and that is why she walks away from Jake, walks away even when he shouts her name like a prayer, shakes him off even when he tries to grab her wrist and drag her back.

This is not about Jake. She will not let him co-opt her redemption.

* * *

She had hoped that the next time she got on a plane like this, to run away from the world she knew, it would be with Fitz, to Vermont, to the promise of a family and a new start. But that had been a foolish daydream, because Fitz was never hers to keep.

To support, to taste, to covet, but never to keep.

And the same, she realizes, is true for herself.

She is not his. She wants to be – oh, she wants to be – but the way this has played out, the way his life works, there is no place for her. And he can want there to be – he can try to choose her, every time – but the truth is, he cannot give her the reality she needs and deserves. And she can't keep waiting, hoping, wiling herself away while she waits on a mirage.

It's been too much. Too up and down, and left and right, and back and forth. There has to be a moment in which she can finally stand up and say, enough. Enough. No more. There has to be a moment in which she can be her own, and only her own, and be satisfied with that.

His call comes when she's driving to the airfield where her plane is waiting for her. The instinct returns – to pick it up, to let him talk her out of this.

But she turns off the ringer, and lets the phone vibrate, writhe in silent agony, on the seat beside her.

* * *

Olivia gets on the plane, puts on her seatbelt, and gazes out the window to D.C., already on its way to becoming a distant memory. She doesn't know when, or if, she will return here – but the silence in this plane is sweeter relief than summer rain. It has been too long coming, and the peace it brings her reminds her that this really is the right thing to do.

She rests her head against the wall of the plane, lets the late afternoon sunshine warm her cheek through the glass, and almost immediately falls into a deep, dreamless, well-deserved sleep.

* * *

But twenty minutes later, she awakes with a start, because she just has that feeling. And it's true: the plane isn't in the air, because something has gone wrong.

Of course.

The confused assistant explains that the plane has mysteriously been given an executive order not to leave U.S. airspace, and the pilot is still working on a way out of this. But Olivia has an inkling that she knows exactly what's going on.

She should never have told her associates what she was doing.

It was probably Abby. Abby, who expressed such shock and horror when told of Olivia's plans. Abby probably called Cyrus, who probably put her through to Fitz, and now Fitz isn't going to let her go. Fitz is the only one who could give an order like this – and she hates him for his determination, his weakness, whatever it is, in stranding her this way.

He just won't let her go. Won't let her find her own happiness. He needs her, and so he will fight her. Fight her, instead of fighting _for_ her.

If he really loved her, wouldn't he give her time and space to put herself back together again?

Miserably, she rests her head against the plane wall again, but sleep won't come, and she is sick with anxiety, with frustration.

Her flight was never supposed to be about Fitz. But, naturally, anything that's about her inevitably leads back to him.

* * *

The plane remains grounded for three hours, until two small black cars pull up to the tarmac.

From one come two security guards – new ones she hasn't seen before. And from the other comes Fitz.

Fitz. His unkempt curls visible even from this distance. His broad shoulders, his familiar walk. He has dispensed with his suit jacket and tie, and he has the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows. He looks like he was supposed to shave this morning and didn't. He turns her into a cliché: heart stopped, breath taken, stomach a haven for restless butterflies. She closes her eyes again, because he makes her ache, he makes her melt, and she got on this plane to avoid the inevitable scene.

_Why won't he let her go?_

He climbs the stairs into the plane, and she can smell him the moment he enters her vicinity. That cologne he uses – musky and handsome, taking her back to early days, innocent days, working on his campaign and tying his tie for him and sitting beside him on that bus for endless weeks as they drove around the country talking strategy. Takes her back to stolen kisses in hotel rooms, and the salt of his sweat in the dark after a long day, and the way everything about him captivated her.

They have come a long, long way since then. And she misses those days – the way they used to be.

At that time, she would have given anything for him to drop everything and come to her like this.

He steps on board, takes no notice of anyone else. His eyes are only for her, as he stops dead in the aisle, drinks her in.

He looks almost as awful as she feels. There are bags beneath his eyes, like leftover smoke from a forest fire, and the lines in his face seem deeper than usual, deepened by no sleep and tragedy. He looks older. He looks…defeated.

But he's here. He's standing in front of her. He smells like a promise – but of what, she no longer knows. There is a tangle of thorns inside her throat.

He tries to smile, but it comes off more like a grimace.

"Hi," he says, his voice like sweetened gravel.

Her lower lip quivers. Her bones collapse in on themselves like a house of cards.

"Hi," she whispers back.

* * *

He sits beside her, but doesn't say anything; not for several minutes. He keeps his arms locked to his sides so that they don't touch. The sun sets from the window, casting the most exquisite light on the features she knows so well. She can't look at him, but she is acutely aware of his breadth, his warmth, his unspoken but obvious desire. Her body is tense, her posture stiff, but she rests her head against the chair, and stares up at the ceiling.

He waits – for what, she doesn't know. His eyes are averted to his lap, to his restless hands. The dying sunlight catches the gleam of his wedding ring, still dutifully encircling his finger. He stays quiet a long, long time, before he gently breaks the silence.

"Were you really going to leave without saying goodbye?"

She can feel his eyes on him, but she won't look. She can't.

"I really am sorry about Jerry," she murmurs, her voice shaky but unbroken. "I'm sorry about…everything."

She chances a look at him now, and is immediately sorry for it; his face crumples, and it's like he might explode with the pressure of containing his grief. The impulse to hold him is almost too strong to overcome. Almost.

"Mellie needs you," she says, near tears herself. "Karen needs you."

"_I _need _you_." He's shaking; his eyes are shiny, and his face is contorted with anguish.

"Please don't leave me," he whimpers, all in a rush – and his voice breaks, he himself breaks, like a creaky dam finally giving way, unleashing an uncontainable tumult.

He tried his best to give her space, not to let it get down to this, but now he buries his face in her collarbone, clutches her body against him like she's his only anchor in this fathomless ocean – and she lets him. She lets him hold her and she squeezes him back; she starts crying into his hair for what happened, for her part in it.

He lost his son. He lost Jerry, and now he's losing her, and he cries helplessly into her skin because he can't do this without her. He is a broken vase, all the shattered pieces incapable of truly being whole again. She feels him shudder against her, and she has to bite her lip to keep from screaming.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she gasps into his curls, pressing kisses to his scalp. She is sorry for so many things – for her family, for his loss. For falling in love with him and bringing them to this. For wanting to leave tonight; for still wanting to leave, even now. "I'm so sorry."

She gently lifts his head from her chest, and holds his face in her hands, rubs his tears away with her thumbs. His hands move from her back to her forearms, grasping her like she's going to fly away and he's the only thing left keeping her on earth. His face is so close to hers that she can count his every single eyelash. His eyes still overflow, and so do hers – but she holds him as steady as she can.

"I'm sorry that this happened to you," she says. "And I'm sorry for not saying goodbye. But Fitz…you won the election. The country needs you. Your family needs you. And both of them come first. I have done my job; my contract is up, and I don't work for you anymore. So I'm going to go, and I'm going to do what I need to do, and I don't want you to look for me. I want you to do your job, now, and do it well. I want you to be strong for Mellie, and Karen, and the American people. Can you do that for me?"

He can't. He shakes his head, and he wants to object, but she cuts him off— "It doesn't matter if you can, Fitz, because you have to. You have no choice. So you say, yes. Yes, you can do that."

"Liv, Livvie—" But she presses her lips to his, presses hard, kisses the thought, his pleas, away.

And it's like an attempted resuscitation, for both of them. It's rough, and deep, and desperate, two tongues and two hearts on a chaotic collision course that ends only in ruin. He kisses her like it's going to make her stay, but she kisses him like it's a parting gift, one last hit before they have to quit cold turkey. When she wrenches her mouth away, it's as though she's taken him off life support, and he looks at her like he might die if she leaves him.

But that's the thing. She can't be his life support. It's not fair to ask her to be his life support. She can't be the only one keeping him together.

She kisses him once more, chastely, between the eyes.

"Leaving is not about you," she tells him softly, his face still in her hands. "You need to let me go. At least, for now."

He rests his forehead against hers, his breath hot on her skin. His nose brushes against hers with such sweet melancholy.

"I love you," he whispers, as though that's enough. "I love you, Olivia."

"I love you too," she whispers back. "But this isn't fair, to anyone."

He draws back so that he can look at her, really _look_ at her. He cups her jaw in his hand, runs his thumb across her cheekbone, trying to memorize every shade of brown in her extraordinary eyes.

"I won this election and now I can't even remember why I wanted it," he admits.

"You have it in you to do real good as president," she tells him. "You've been distracted. There has been…everything to give, in the last year and a half. But you can still do your job, do it well, and have a happy ending."

His brow furrows slightly, as though trying to comprehend any happy ending for himself that didn't include her. Her resulting half-smile is wry, and pained, but sure.

"There are no more elections to think about. You don't have to worry about pleasing all the special interests long-term anymore. You have the sympathy of the entire country; you could pass just about any kind of legislation you want, and you should take the time to think of real issues to tackle while they let you." She hesitates, but carries on: "And you have a chance to mend things with Mellie. With your daughter. There is work to do, and a ways to go, but you can reconnect with your family again. That matters. That's important."

"But Liv…I can't do this without you."

He says it like a dying wish. And it's that way of his – it's that wild hope catching like fire in his eyes – that suddenly reminds her of Jake Ballard.

Fitz, like Jake, wants her – needs her – to save him. He wants, at his core, to run away from his job and his family and bask in the sun with her.

But too much has happened. She's not head gladiator anymore, no longer a shining, unbreakable messiah for the downtrodden. She's not the woman she was when she first fell in love with him.

It still isn't easy to leave him – especially not when for him, leaving means facing a crisis like none he has ever known, the death of his child, without his trusted crisis manager – but she knows with a sharp, newfound clarity that she really is the scandal this time. She knows she's the problem. She knows that she needs time, and space, and her own focused, sustained attention put things right. That gives her the strength to bear the burden.

She says to him, with a glimmer of her old decisive conviction: "You _can _do it, and you will. Go. Everyone needs you."

* * *

The sun is setting properly as she gets off the plane with him, to see him off to his car. The light picks up the copper in his hair, illuminates the deep creases in his face that time and stress have created.

They stand on the tarmac, between the stairs to the plane and the car waiting to take him back to the White House, to real life. She doesn't know when she's going to see him again, or what will become of him in the nightmarish hell of the next days, weeks, months. She has no idea what the future holds for either of them. But she stands her ground, as bravely as she knows how.

On an impulse, he leans in to kiss her – one last time, one last minute – but their lips do not quite meet. He falters before he goes the whole distance, and she doesn't want to make this any harder than it already is.

He wants to kiss her – but he thinks better of it. He, too, has had to do some growing up.

"Someday," he whispers, because he believes it.

"Maybe," she whispers back, because it's all she has left to give.

They turn around in the same moment, to avoid watching the other's back move towards a different path. He's in the car by the time she's in the plane.

She doesn't watch his car drive away, as the pilot prepares to take off. She can't. It will hurt, and she will reconsider, and she will hate herself when she goes back.

Instead, she rests her head against the seat, closes her eyes, and embarks upon the first long, real, fulfilling sleep she has had in living memory.

* * *

A/N: Please remember to read and review before you exit!


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